


A Hand to Hold Your Hand

by Barkour



Category: Monster High
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 17:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4970641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twyla wakes Howleen from a nightmare, and the two ghouls talk in the light of the half-moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hand to Hold Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> I GOT SO EXCITED ABOUT TWYLA AND HOWLEEN IN 13 WISHES I PAUSED THE MOVIE TWENTY MINUTES IN TO WRITE FIC SUPER QUICK. Anyway. There's a reference in here to [this short webisode from the fourth volume](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQLyiZ1-i1U).

Howleen fell out of bed. In the tumbling, she knocked her head on the bedside table, caught the sheets around her, and pulled two pillows down with her. The pillows offered little support; they landed on her upturned face. 

A half-moon peeked through the window. Its light spilled white across the floor.

"Yooooow," she moaned, clutching at her aching skull. "Howlette, what you do that for?" 

A shadow moved across her, and Howleen squinted. A sweet scent, a light one, as like a flower at the end of its rot. Her baby sister stank worse than even Clawd after casketball practice, and Howlette was at a sleepover with her baby junior high friends anyway.

"Twyla?" She lowered her hands.

The light resolved. From the shadow she emerged, pale faced and half gleamed. Twyla's brow was knit, her eyes deferred. 

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't think you'd wake up."

Howleen fought first with a yawn and then with the sheets. Sleep, she shook away readily. The sheets did not surrender.

Leaning back, Twyla offered a hand, and Howleen took it. Twyla's palm was cold, clammy. The thought that her own palm, even shaved, might scratch at Twyla worried Howleen, then she scowled.

"What are you doing up in here? You know what time it is?" She kicked again at the sheets, still tangled around her legs. "Darn sheets. Look like a mummy..."

Twyla smiled. Her cheek dimpled, an inch from her mouth. "You don't look like a mummy. Your nose is too wet." She flicked a finger fleetly against the soft tip of Howleen's nose, then drew her hands away. 

"S'not wet," Howleen grumbled. She rubbed at her nose.

Still smiling, that little, soft smile she offered Howleen when they spoke, Twyla perched on the edge of Howleen's bed. Her hands fell to either side, gripping the mattress, and she leaned forward. 

"I heard it," said Twyla.

"Heard what? Me snoring?"

"You don't snore."

Howleen shoved the sheets down, struggling to get them past her knobby knees.

"You listening to me sleeping?"

Twyla said, "No!" then giggled. Her fingertips brushed over her lips; she calmed. Shyly she smiled again at Howleen. "You were having a nightmare."

"I was?" Howleen at last wriggled her toes free of the sheets. "I don't remember that. All I remember is falling out of bed." 

She hopped up to that bed, to sit close to Twyla. Her thigh, exposed by her sleep shorts, pressed flush to Twyla's thigh, covered yet in the skirt of a long, thin nightgown. Why did Howleen's fingers itch? She rubbed them on her knees, wishing she'd thought to wear a nightgown. 

"I would've remembered if I had a nightmare."

"Nah, I took it," said Twyla. "You wouldn't have liked it."

"So instead you pushed me out of my bed?"

Twyla fussed her lips and glanced to the side, the far side. Joke incoming, Howleen thought with delight.

"Well," Twyla said, "it did wake you up?"

"Ha!" Howleen fell back, giggling. "You could've just pinched my toes."

Twyla looked briefly at the sheets, tangled on the floor. "But then you'd kick me."

Howleen scoffed at this. "I'd never kick you."

Another dimple. Twyla's eyes dropped. Her lashes, thick as spider's webs, covered her eyes. Teeth, set in her lip. Then she glanced at Howleen; she smiled again, and then she too laid to rest next to Howleen.

"Was it a bad one?"

Howleen turned on her side to face Twyla. Twyla, too, turned. The gossamer thin cobwebs of her hair rumpled beneath her cheek. 

"I didn't want to watch it very long."

"You said I wouldn't like it." Howleen brushed at her own hair, drawing it from her face. 

"There was a full moon." Twyla folded her hands and slipped them under her cheek, hair tangling around her wrist. "And screaming."

Howleen thought. "Don't know. Sounds fun. Don't you ever want to maybe run wild for a little bit? And don't tell me you don't want to."

Twyla twiddled two fingers, the first of each hand. She hummed a moment. "Well... It was fun, chasing the shadow nightmares and trying to get them back into the box."

"You call that fun!" Howleen lapsed into giggling again. Ducking her head, her brow brushed Twyla's arm. "I was so scared we were going to have to tell your dad what we did."

Too, Twyla was giggling. Her nose wrinkled uncutely, and her top row of teeth stuck out. 

"Popping your teeth out again," Howleen teased. "You gonna bite me?"

"That was in your nightmare, too," Twyla told her.

Howleen arched her brow high. "You biting me?"

"Not those pronouns," said Twyla slowly, "in that order."

"Me biting you!" Howleen scooted closer. Her cropped claws touched Twyla's arm, very lightly. "I thought you said you didn't watch for long."

"I watched long enough."

Twyla unfolded her hands. She took Howleen's hand in her right hand, and their fingers wound together, Twyla's sickly green bound to Howleen's shaved brown.

"Thanks," said Howleen. "For pushing me out of bed."

Twyla's thumb traced idle lines along the side of Howleen's little finger. Their hair made a mess, Howleen's bold pink and that faint and glistening green.

"I really wasn't trying to snoop. But..." Twyla's voice softened a slivering measure. "It was so loud." She stroked Howleen's knuckle. "You were alone."

Alone, alone. She remembered the nightmare now. She'd had it before. Unseen, caught in the shadow of her brothers, her sisters, the height of the trees. Calling to a ghost white moon that did not heed.

Now: Howleen bit her lip. Another inch, she scooted. Her knees bumped Twyla's knees. The hem of Twyla's nightgown had rucked up her thighs. Their knees, too, fitted together. She remembered how startled Twyla had been the first time Howleen had scented her and turned to say hello. How startled, the first time Howleen, heart racing and haired nape prickling, leaned forward and kissed her lightly.

Howleen closed her eyes and leaned forward again. Twyla made a little sound, and then she pressed her lips to Howleen's lips. A smile warmed Twyla's cool mouth. Another kiss, as like brushing a thin line on a canvas, then a third unlike. 

"I'm glad you woke me up."

Twyla laughed and Howleen's heart went thump, thump, thump. Gracelessly, she recovered.

"You could've stopped me from hitting my head, though."

"Probably," Twyla admitted. "But I didn't expect you to jump out of bed."

"Maybe I was showing off for you."

"Very impressive," said Twyla. "You should join the SKRM team."

Howleen curled an arm around Twyla, and Twyla, glowing in the shadows that clung to her, brought a leg to bend her knee at the backside of Howleen's thigh, near to her hip. 

"I could fearlead for you."

"You don't have to do that." Howleen pulled her head back to look at Twyla. "I know you don't like it when people stare at you and all that."

"I don't mind it so much," said Twyla, "if it's with you," and she kissed the fretful protest from Howleen's mouth, as if dismissing the lingering shadow of a bleak dream.


End file.
